Meat Demand Claimed
To Be Driven By Fads

CHICAGO — First it was "millenium madness," then the notion that would-be millenium revelers were buying up choice cuts to assure a supply for their party needs. The latest explanation for the healthy demand in red meat circles is a diet fad.

No one, it seems, is ready to concede that Americans may finally be ready for real food after a couple of decades of health scares.

A high-protein diet craze that orders up juicy slabs of steak, pork chops and even bacon may be beefing up meat prices on the wholesale market, contend so-called "experts."

"Confirmed pasta eaters are now red meat eaters," said Bill Plummer, a Chicago analyst among the industry watchers who contend the nation's latest diet fad is adding weight to prices on the sometimes faltering wholesale market.

The high-protein diet promoted in such best sellers as "Protein Power" and "Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution" is billed as a way to fool the body's metabolism by nixing carbohydrates and sugars in favor of protein and fat.

Demand for beef is expected to increase 1.6 percent this year over last year, according to data released Friday by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. And demand for pork is already up 2.3 percent this year, according to the National Pork Producers Council.

At the same time, prices are rising for meat and livestock futures.

Live cattle futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange are in the healthy 70-cents-a-pound range. Fresh pork bellies have flirted with the 80-cents-a-pound mark, surpassing even the traditionally pricier untrimmed pork loins, though at least some of the rise is attributed to the flooding in North Carolina that wiped out about 30,000 hogs.

"It's a real shock," says Dan Vaught, a livestock analyst with A.G. Edwards & Sons in St. Louis, who also believes the high-protein fad is helping to bolster hog prices. The prices traditionally drop when people put away their grills as summer ends, but they don't seem to be doing so this year, he said.

Alisa Harrison, a spokeswoman for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, agreed that promotions for high-protein diets aren't hurting the industry, but she also points to improving economies that are able to buy more meat, particularly in southeast Asia.

Dallas Hockman of the National Pork Producers Council attributes the increased pork demand to "chicken fatigue."

Analyst Michael Swinford of Rosenthal-Collins Inc. in Chicago expects the diet fad will be short-lived, especially since the American Dietetic Association recently called high-protein diets "a nightmare."